Flashback
by Healer Pomfrey
Summary: Ginny asks her Hermione what she had always wanted to ask. "Why don't you like flying?" Here is the answer. Set after Hogwarts with flashback to Hermione's first Hogwarts year, sick!Hermione. A pointless drabble, only read if you have nothing better to do.


**Flashback**  
**by Healer Pomfrey**

_All recognizable characters belong to J. K. Rowling, and I am not earning anything by writing this story.  
I am not a native speaker of English. Please excuse my mistakes.  
_

**_Just a really stupid drabble, which my muse insisted to write. Only read if you have nothing better to do  
You have been warned :P_**

* * *

The Charms professor and Ravenclaw Head of House, Hermione Granger, glanced at her wrist watch. _'Two hours until the students are going to arrive,'_ she thought, when Headmistress Minerva McGonagall finally ended the staff meeting. Smiling at Ginny Weasley, the new flying instructor, who was sitting next to her, she asked in a soft voice, "Excited?"

Ginny rolled her eyes in apparent annoyance. "Don't tell me that Harry and you weren't excited last year, when you became teachers here," she replied, grinning. "By the way, in fact I've wanted to ask you this for a long time but never got around to do so..." She hesitated for a moment, seeing that Hermione was looking at her in expectance, before she continued, "Why is it that you don't like flying?"

Hermione let out a long sigh, observing from the corner of her eyes how her colleagues, Professor Snape, the Slytherin Head and Potions Master, and Harry Potter, the Gryffindor Head and Transfiguration professor, left the room, talking animatedly.

"I didn't like flying from my first Flying class onwards," she remembered.

_**Flashback September 1991**_

Hermione lazily glanced at the large numbers that displayed the time on the ceiling, realising that it was only five o'clock in the morning. _'Still early,'_ she thought in surprise, noticing, horrified, that her throat was very sore. She could barely swallow. _'Oh no, I can't get sick now,'_ she thought. _'I can't miss classes.'_ She closed her eyes and tried to find a cool spot on her pillow; however, sleep did not come easily, and by the time she had to get up to be on time for breakfast, she already felt exhausted.

Fortunately, neither Ron nor Harry noticed that she was not her usual, energetic self this morning, and Hermione managed to get through breakfast with her hands wrapped around her mug of tea, not feeling up to eat anything.

She dragged herself through her morning classes, noticing that she felt worse by the hour. Apart from her throat, also her head and eyes were sore, and she could barely even turn her head. At lunchtime, the upcoming Flying class was the main topic. Hermione was glad that everyone's attention was diverted and slowly took a few spoonfuls of soup, looking up startled, when Harry suddenly addressed her.

"Hermione, are you feeling all right?" Harry enquired, giving her a concerned look.

"Of course," Hermione replied crisply, glad that her voice did not sound hoarse. _'I just hope I'll be able to keep myself on my broom,'_ she thought, feeling utterly dizzy as she trailed behind her friends to the Quidditch pitch.

To her annoyance, it took a very long time, with Neville crashing into the ground, Madam Hooch taking him to the hospital wing, and Harry being led away by Professor McGonagall, before the class could finally mount their brooms. _'Thank Merlin,'_ Hermione thought, when her broom immediately came into her hand, considering that it had taken several attempts when she had called the broom before Neville's accident.

Hermione slowly took into the air. _'I should be scared,'_ she mused, _'but I feel so bad that I don't really care and just hope the class will be over soon.'_ She carefully flew around the Quidditch pitch, trying hard to focus on her broom in spite of the fact that she felt hot and cold at the same time and was shivering violently. Suddenly, her view fell onto the trees of the Forbidden forest. To her surprise, the trees were performing a coordinated dance, accompanied by the soft melody of a Christmas song. _'I didn't know that the trees can dance,'_ she thought, scrunching her forehead in thought as she tried to recall if it said anything about the trees' abilities in _Hogwarts: A History_.

Like from far away, she heard Madam Hooch's voice, "Fly down and land on the ground, everyone." _'Thank Merlin,'_ she thought, feeling utterly relieved at the prospect of being able to return to her dormitory soon.

Hermione looked down, noticing in shock that the ground was swinging to and through. _'How am I supposed to land on the ground if it's moving?'_ she thought, terrified, and carefully lowered her broom.

Suddenly, she found that she was sitting on the ground, the school broom lying next to her. _'How did I manage to land?'_ she mused, looking up, terrified, when Madam Hooch came to stand in front of her, casting her a disapproving glare.

"You need to practise your landing, Ms. Granger. Go and put your broom away," she said crisply and walked away.

_'Practising my landing?'_ Hermione mused, horrified. _'No way am I going to mount a broom ever again. I don't care if I fail the subject. It's probably not an OWL class anyway.'_

"Hurry up, Hermione," Ron Weasley said, impatiently, pulling her out of her thoughts. "It's time for dinner, and I'm starving. Don't make such a scene. Flying is not so bad."

"Go ahead," Hermione replied, somehow feeling so dizzy that she was not sure if she'd manage to get up from the ground without stumbling back right away. _'Not in front of everyone,'_ she thought, somehow feeling miserable.

"Mione, what's wrong?" she suddenly heard Harry's voice, automatically gripping the kind hand that was extended to pull her up from the ground. Before she knew what happened, a cold hand found its way to her forehead, and Harry let out a small gasp. "You're burning up. Stay put and let me put away your broom. Then I'll take you to the hospital wing."

"No," Hermione protested, wearily leaning onto Harry's arm as they headed towards the entrance doors, not even realising that everyone else was already gone. "It's not so bad. It's just..." She mumbled something about the dancing trees and problems to land on the ground, causing Harry to look at her in concern.

Apparently understanding that she did not want to go to see the Mediwitch, Harry led the girl back to the common room and gently helped her to lie down on the sofa in front of the fireplace.

_'Ah, feels good,'_ Hermione thought, gratefully noticing that Harry carefully adjusted a cold cloth to her forehead.

"Harry..."

"Congratulation..."

"... for making it on the team..."

"... as the youngest Seeker..."

"... in a century," the Weasley twins' voices suddenly pentrated her ears.

"You're on the Quidditch team?" she queried, looking at Harry, who was sitting on the edge of the sofa, gently bathing her hot cheeks with a wet cloth.

"Yes," Harry replied, grinning. "I've never even played Quidditch though. No idea why McGonagall deems me fit to play Seeker."

"I know the reason," Hermione explained, realising in shock that her voice was about to fail. "Your father was on the team and even won the Quidditch cup. I can show you his name in the Trophy room."

"You're not going to go anywhere today," Harry said in determination, turning to the twins. "Does any of you by chance know how to magically check a temperature or cast a diagnostic spell?"

Fred and George exchanged a glance, before Fred pulled his wand, pointing it at Hermione's head, while he mumbled an incantation. Seconds later, red numbers emerged from the tip of his wand, showing "38.8".

"That's definitely a fever," George said, frowning, and raised his own wand.

"George, are you sure what you're doing?" Harry asked sharply, raising his arm to stop the other boy.

The twins chuckled. "How often do you think..."

"... we've watched our mum..."

"... checking on ourselves or our siblings?"

"Don't worry..."

"... We know what we're doing."

With that George quickly waved his wand over the girl, making a small parchment come out of the tip of his wand. "Tonsillitis," he read aloud. "Come on, Fred, let's nick some fever reducer and tonsillitis potion from the hospital wing."

"Harry, if you want to look after Hermione, you should take her to your dormitory, since you won't be able to get into the girls' dorm," Fred advised the boy, before he hurried behind his brother, who was already on his way through the portrait hole.

"Hermione," Harry addressed the girl in a soft voice. "Would you like me to look after you? Or do you prefer that I take you to the hospital wing?"

"No, please don't. I'd surely have to stay there for some days, but I don't want to miss classes, so if you don't mind, I'd prefer if I could stay with you," Hermione croaked, miserably, looking pleadingly into his beautiful green eyes that were directed at her in apparent concern.

"All right then, come on, let's go to my dormitory," Harry decided, gently steadying her as he led her to his own bed next to Ron's.

Heavily leaning onto his arm as they slowly entered the dormitory, Hermione sighed in relief as her achy head came to lie on the soft pillow. _'He is so nice,'_ she thought, as she closed her eyes and tried to relax, lured into slumber by the soothing touch of Harry's cool hands to her hot skin and his soft voice that was gently whispering to her.

Every few hours, Harry woke her up to give her the next dose of potion, but she always drifted off to sleep again right away. By the time she woke up in the morning, her fever was gone, and she felt incredibly grateful and happy to have found such a good friend, who did not mind staying up looking after her the whole night.

_**End of flashback**_

"Hermione," Ginny's voice brought her back to reality.

"Well, from that time onwards, I did not like flying and I fell in love with Harry Potter," Hermione concluded her explanation in a small voice, before she looked up, only now realising in shock that none other than Harry Potter was sitting at her other side, patiently waiting for her and Ginny to finish their conversation.

Brown eyes met emerald green eyes for an instant, before Harry leaned over and gently captured her lips with his own.

_'He is kissing me,'_ Hermione thought in disbelief, _'me, the insufferable know-it-all with the horrible bushy hair?'_ She instinctively leaned into the kiss, somehow thoroughly enjoying the feeling.

"Love you too, Mione," he whispered as he finally pulled off.

"Congratulation," Ginny said, grinning broadly at her best friends and colleagues.

**The End**


End file.
